2020-06-27 The Lady with the Pink Hair

The Lady with the Pink Hair

Participants: Luu

Location: The Lady with the Pink Hair

Date and Time: June 27, 2020 1:15 pm

Summary: Once again, they gather

Mood Music: Legendary Pink Dots - "Zero Zero"

Quietly murmuring amongst themselves, the assembled await the appointed hour. They do not truly know each other, but they understand each other. No one else truly understands them, at least not this part of their lives. The few who might have tried to explain to outsiders now know better. There’s no going back from that sort of revelation. The majority always understood that secrecy was the best option, perhaps the only option. Here, they can talk freely of their shared obsession, and over the years, sometimes, it’s felt like family. Despite this, they are universally aware of the fact that they will all likely die alone.

A hush falls over the assembled as what may well be the eldest among them walks to the front of the room and takes his appointed place. Trusted assistants follow closely carrying arcane items, arranging them in exact and coordinated positions around the old man. Though they have each spent unfathomable hours making study of these items, at present, they hardly look. No need, they trust their formulas. Each individual has their own closely guarded system. Precise calculations honed over the years. They’ve all seen what can happen when one is sloppy, and none of them will allow this for themselves.

The old man has his own system, and this is what truly allows them to assemble. This is why he alone among them can conduct their needed ritual. The training and study he underwent was available to all of them, and each would give their own reason for why they are not him. The truth is that none among them truly understand how he is able to do what he does, nor do they think that they themselves would have succeeded had they tried. Outside this room, one would hardly notice him, and that is the way he prefers it. Inside this room, no one’s eyes will leave him, and the assembled give him his proper respect. The transformation he undergoes is not something that can be spoken of, it simply is.

If the dead disapprove of what they do, they have not yet made themselves known. Every so often, one among them will fail to attend a gathering, and never be seen again. That the dead might be responsible is something they all have thought, at least or one time or another. All of them except the old man, his reason for being here is not quite like theirs, and he has no time for such foolishness. He sees himself as someone quite different from them. They believe, while he acts. When one disappears, he simply prepares himself for a night much like tonight. This gathering is not because of one of them, but one similar to them that they had never met. Pitiful, solitary creatures who lack even the family they find in each other, and how many of them there have been over the years.

Instruments readied, the old man begins the same way he always begins. The chant envelops the room, spoken in a sacred language that only he truly understands. To the rest of them it is a glossolalia, but one that brings them together, and provides one of the crucial components in their own formulations. The only thing they can never account for is each other.

One after another, their methods begin to fail them, and yet the old man continues the ritual unmoved by their plight. These failures are something he counts on, a result of the way he has arranged the ritual tonight, and every other night. The crucial component in his own sacred formulations, and what allows him to live. He cares not for the treasures of the dead, tonight they go to the youngest. Tonight they have been sold to the lady with the pink hair.